Speech acts in computer science

Speech act theory has been influential in computer science since the early 1980s, particularly in the design of artificial languages for communication between software entities ("agents" or "softbots"). The theory was used, for example, to give a semantics to Agent Communication Language (ACL), an agent language developed by the standards body Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA). This semantics built on the work of Phil Cohen, Hector Levesque and David Sadek, among others. The FIPA ACL speech act semantics, expressed semi-formally using epistemic modal logic, defines utterances in ACL in terms of the certain beliefs, uncertain beliefs, desires and intentions of the speaker. In principle, therefore, it enables agents using FIPA ACL to be sure that other agents will understand the meaning of utterances in the same way as the speaker. However, the FIPA ACL language syntax and semantics, although now widely used in agent systems, have been heavily criticized on theoretical and practical grounds.

TASK:

1. How is speech act theory used in the creation of software?

2. What aspect of semantics is paid special attention to in computer science?

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Self-check questions:

1. What is the speech act theory related to in ethics and philosophy of law?

2. How are listeners able to derive meaning from indirect speech acts?

3. Are congratulations considered to be speech acts? Prove why.

Inferences:

The lecture has introduced three types of speech acts with numerous examples. As we have observed the speech theory has become of interest for the IT specialists who find it useful in constructing the artificial language of communication between computers.

“Illocutionary acts”

Plan:

• various approaches to illocutionary acts;

• illocutionary force;

• illocutionary force indicators;

• illocutionary negations.

Key words:

Illocutionary acts, locutionary acts, perlocutionary acts, force, propositional negation.

Objectives:

The main objective of this lecture is to find out the elementary type of speech acts are – illocutionary acts. The lecture describes various approaches to interpreting what the essence of illocutionary acts is. You are going to learn the differences between illocutionary, locutionary and perlocutionary acts. At the end of the lecture I will mention how negations can change the type of an act a particular utterance is.

Recommendations:

In looking at other interpretations of what an illocutionary act is, it is preferable to accept the definition and explanation given by J.L. Austin.

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Various approaches to illocutionary acts task: make notes on all the aspects in which illocutionary acts are described.

Illocutionary act is a technical term that has been introduced by John L. Austin in the course of his investigations concerning what he calls 'performative' and 'constative utterances'. According to Austin's original exposition in his famous 'How to Do Things with Words', an illocutionary act is an act (1) for the performance of which I must make it clear to some other person that the act is performed (Austin speaks of the 'securing of uptake'), and (2) the performance of which involves the production of what Austin calls 'conventional consequences' like, e.g., rights, commitments, or obligations. For example, in order to perform a promise I must make clear to my audience that the promise occurs, and making the promise involves the undertaking of an obligation to do the promised thing: hence promising is an illocutionary act in the present sense.

However, for certain reasons, among them insufficient knowledge of Austin's original exposition, the term 'illocutionary act' is nowadays understood in quite a number of other ways. For example, many define the term with reference to examples, saying such things as that any speech act that amounts to stating, questioning, commanding, promising, and so on, is an illocutionary act; they then often fail to give any sense of the expression 'illocutionary act' capable of making clear what being an illocutionary act essentially consists in.

It is also often emphasised that Austin introduced the illocutionary act by means of a contrast with other kinds of acts: the illocutionary act, he says, is an act performed in saying something, as contrasted with a locutionary act, the act of saying something; the locution and also contrasted with a perlocutionary act, an act performed by saying something.

Again another way of defining illocutionary acts goes back to Schiffer's famous book 'Meaning', in which the illocutionary act is represented as just the act of meaning something. Following the conception of Bach and Harnish as introduced in 'Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts', again, an illocutionary act is an attempt to communicate, something which they analyse again as the expressing of an attitude.

TASK: what is the difference between the approaches of other authors apart from John L. Austin?